


Check and Balances

by givemeunicorns



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Coping, M/M, Multi, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1802548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/givemeunicorns/pseuds/givemeunicorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is an odd thing, that it can feel so different and still be the same emotion. Steve is like coming home. Sam is like coming up for air. Natasha is the shield to protect them is he ever splinters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Check and Balances

**Author's Note:**

> introspective little Bucky thing. Just a warning, this does deal with Bucky dwelling on his own death. Not in a suicidal manner but still, just a heads up. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own these characters and I make no money from this

Steve's is like coming home. He always has been, even when he was little and frail, there was something about that cocky half grin that made Bucky's heart shoot up into his throat. It had been the biggest relief of his life, seeing that grin was still there, even after Steve's scientifically modified growth spurt.

Steve had always been a fighter. It wasn't just bullies, though that's what all the books like to focus on. During the dark times, when Bucky had existed as a nameless man, somewhere between Winter Soldier and James Barnes, where some days he could untangle his brain to remember what year it was or how to speak english instead of Russian, he'd read anything he could find on Steve, on himself, about Peggy, about the rest of the commandos that had once counted him as a friend. But as read, things began to surface, details that the book didn't get quite right, things that were embellished or down played or just plain left out. He remembered snippets of things, memories prompted by the words on the page. Jim's pointing out constellations to them in a brilliant southern french sky, watching Gabe dance all night with pretty girls in bar in Verona. But most of all, it brings back memories of an arm slung across the back of Bucky's chair, of that easy half grin, and the way it made Bucky's heart ache when it wasn't for him. It made him remember dark nights in a broken down brooklyn apartment, when Steve was too weak to stand, coughing so hard he broke a rib, yet still had the strength to question where the money for the medicine came from. It made him remember the thousand times he looked at his friend, all pale skin and jutting bones and sharp angles, and wondered what it would be like to hold him the way he held his girls. It made him remember seeing that skinny kid's face on the body of an adonis and fearing, just for a moment, that his friend was gone forever.

Peggy had known, he was sure. She looked at Steve like she wanted to eat him alive, in the best way possible, wanted to savor the taste of him, wanted to make him a part of her. Stark had a big mouth and it was no secret that peggy had looked at him like that since the first day she met him, when he was still a 95 pound asthmatic from Brooklyn. Steve looked at her like he was the moon and she was the Earth, like everything about him was made to gravitate around her. But sometimes, while Steve was looking at her, she would look at Bucky and smile. Not the kind of grin that made Bucky, and every other red blooded man in the general velocities, brains turn off for a second because _damn._ It wasn't triumphant, as if Steve was some prize she'd won, because Peggy treated people like human beings, not toys or science experiments. It was a soft, sad, apologetic sort of smile. Like she couldn't decide, in that instant, if she was happy or sad. Bucky would give a small shake of his head and moment would be over, and they would all move on like it had never happened.

Sometimes, right before they put him on ice, in the moments where unconsciousness was pulling him down but he wasn’t quite there yet, he remembered them. Though the Winter Soldier hadn't known their names, it had made the surrender easier. Faces he knew he should remember, accompanied by a warm feeling he had no name of programming to place. So when the memories of Winter start to melt, leaving shockwaves in his brain, make him scream and break things, or vomit, or sometimes just curl into a ball for days on end, he clings to them, to the faces and memories and the feelings they bring that are almost human in their intensity, even when he can't remember the names that go with them. He holds on for dear life to the image of blonde hair and blue eyes and a cocky half grin on a body too small to have any thing to be cocky about. He grabs for it like a drowning man while he rides out the waves of panic, rage, and confusion. Still there is a constant code feeding into his brain, even when he is at his worst. Think, move, hide, survive. Don't get caught. It's what keeps him going when nothing else can.

Then one day, there's clarity. He knows his name. He knows the names of the faces he dreams about, really knows them, beyond the mission specs and the level of danger they present. He doesn't know how long it will last and so he takes the advantage. He picks the numbers from his brain that form an address, and Steve is there at the door when he rings it, staring at a ghost.

“Can I come in,” is all he musters, before the chaos and confusion slips back in and he's gone.

He wakes up, hours later, on Steve's couch. After that he never leaves. Some days he wants to, some days he's sure leaving is the right thing to do, because healing is a long and nasty process. It hurts and it's complicated. Some days he screams, some days he lashes out, some days he breaks things. Some days he tucks into a corner with a hundred yard stare, doesn't talk, doesn't eat, just sits. Either Steve is always there, straight-spined and ready to do what needs doing. He thinks about leaving a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, because Steve deserves better than a broken man.

Time goes by and good days get more frequent, days were he can talk and sometimes even laugh. Days were he wakes up knowing for sure who he is, knowing the house his is in is safe, knowing that the bodies pressed against him are real, not a web he's spun for himself, a false reality of his own creation, that he is only allowed to slip into when the ice comes and the Soldier is shut down.

Steve's love is safe and familiar, even when it crosses the line of friendship. Times are different now, he tells Bucky, there are things they can act on the couldn't before. Steve doesn't push him, doesn't ask for anything, but he lets Bucky come to him. Lets him lean into the solid warm while they sit on the couch, lets him crawl into Steve's bed when he can't fight true sleep anymore. Steve holds him when he wakes up screaming and thrashing, braces him when all he can do is vomit until there's nothing left in him. Steve leaves plates of food outside of locked doors, dozes in the hallway incase Bucky wants to come out. It's Bucky who kisses him first, too hard and too rough for a first kiss, and leaves Steve's mouth bruised, but Steve accepts it happily then works on teaching him to be gentler, as he does in all things. He teaches him how to be touch and be touched again, in little ways first, like brushing Bucky's arm as they pass in the hall, letting a hand rest in the curve of Bucky's hip when they fall asleep. He always knows when to back off, not afraid to ask if this is okay or if that's too much too fast.

Sam though...Sam is like coming up for air. Because while Steve has loved Bucky for almost a century, Sam's love is different sort of beast.

With Sam, there are no expectations, no reminiscing stories, no sad glances. Sam grew up with James Barnes, Howling Commando, a mythic hero, a comic book character. Sam is the sort of man who knows where the line between fiction and reality lies, and he has no history with the Bucky as a person. He gets the nastiness of healing too, in a way that Steve can't because he's still inside it. Sam is on the boundary line, looking in, looking back on a place he used to be. Sam has the outside perspective as well as the inside. Sam knows how hard it is to look outside your own pain, Sam knows what it's like to be in a prison in your own head. It's Sam he wants around when he's at his worst. Because Sam pushes, Sam forces him to talk, to eat, to sleep. Steve is an iron will, who just won't quite, resolute. Sam is a brick wall, who won't budge no matter how hard Bucky slams into him, solid down to the foundations. Steve is the air into his lungs but Sam is the hand on his scruff, pulling him up out of the water when he's drowning. Sam helps not because he's always known and loved Bucky, he's not a part of Sam's soul the way his part of Steve's, but because he knows and loves him now.

It's hard at first, figuring out how to work around Sam Wilson. Because Steve loves Sam, everything about the way he moves says so. Sam loves Steve too and Bucky is sure theres no space in what they have for him. Sam tells him to shut the hell up and get over here.

Sam is the one who leaves when the nightmares hit, disappearing just long enough to grab a glass of water, a bottle of something to help him sleep. Steve holds Bucky until he's not a hazard anymore, until he can ask to be let go of, then Sam is there, pressing things into his hands, making him take care of himself. He does the same with Steve. But Sam's the one who wants his nightmares left alone, wants to run them out. Sometimes Bucky and Steve keep him in the house, playing cards, or drinking. Sometimes they follow at a distance, when the nights are bad enough he needs the air.

Sam Wilson is the bedrock they built themselves on, both feet on the ground, despite the time he spends in the air. He's real and true, and while he may be from a different time, he seems to understand the universe so much better than the rest of them.

But Natasha is the safety net. Not because she loves him, she tolerates him, but she loves Steve and Sam in her own distinct way. They're hers, her friends, her allies, her comrades, her responsibility. Bucky is a man who put a bullet through her, though she seems to hold less grudge than he holds guilt.

She's staying at the house one night, and he walks in on her changing, just as she pulls her shirt over her head. He opens his mouth to apologize but he sees the patch of shiny scar tissue, front and back, a matching set, and the words come out wrong.

“I did that,” he said, and the memory is like a shard of ice in his brain. The way her eyes widened when the bullet pushed through her, the way she screamed when the pain finally registered.

She drops her arms, open and unafraid as she looks him in the eye.

“Yeah. You did.”

Natasha is a grounding force because, while Steve and Sam know what happens to soldiers without a war to fight, Natasha knows what it's like to be faced with the red in your ledger. When the memories creep in, Winter memories, bloody and harsh and too, too real, Steve tries to remind him that it was programming, that it wasn't his fault. Sam reminds him that he didn't have a choice, that blaming himself is like blaming the bullet in a gun instead of the person pulling the trigger. But Natasha gets that it doesn't matter, because choice or no, the blood is still on his hands and he has to live with that.

Natasha can see past Bucky Barnes, can see the Winter Soldier still, can see how the program scrapped him raw inside, empty and hollowed out like a rotting jack-o-lantern. She doesn't hold it against him, knows the program that made him, and while she offers him an air of understanding, she also knows what he is capable of. Natasha doesn't love him, not outside of his connection to the others, but in her own way she respects him. She gets him. And that's why he trusts her. Because at the end of the day her allegiance will aways be to Steve and Sam, she will make the hard call so they won't have to. If Bucky snaps, he trusts her to put him down.

She tells them as much.

When he first arrives, she's in Steve's hallway, talking to Steve in that cool, almost clinical tone that lets everyone in the room know she's not just a blade, she's a scalpel, an instrument of precision... and reality.

“Putting a collar on rabid dog doesn't fix the fact that it's dangerous, Steve. You think you know him, but you don't. You knew the base design, the mold they poured that monster into. You have only seen a fraction of what he is capable of and right now he doesn't have full control of his faculties. He. is. Dangerous.”

“He saved me Nat, he came here. He's remembering.”

“He kept you from drowning _after_ he stabbed you. You almost bleed out on that beach, you spent hours in surgery, and a week in the hospital. If you had been anyone but you, you _would_ be dead. That's not the same as saving you, Steve.”

Steve's face grew hard.

“You've killed people too Natasha.”

“Exactly. And I that's why I have never put you under the impression that I was anything other than dangerous.”

Staring at the scar tissue just above her hip, he remembers. It's been months but he knows in a lot of ways she's right. She's a killer who knows what she's done. He remembers only in pieces but he knows that one day he'll have to face the scope of the lives his hands have taken.

“They love you,” she said and there is not an ounce of wavering in her voice, “And I know you love them, when you're Bucky, but you can't have a standard operating procedure when you don't know who you are half the time. If there ever comes a day when you start slipping, I'll see, I'll know, and I'll kill you myself before you get the chance to hurt them.”

“Can you?” he asks and it's not mocking, simply truth. He's never met anyone better than him.

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

She nods, clean and clinical. But it's there, a pact between them. Natasha is the barrier, the line he must keep from crossing. Natasha is an ultimatum. He's not afraid of her, so much as he is cautious. He's not afraid to die, he's wished for it enough times, even before Zola stuck a needle in his arm, when he thought he'd rather die than lay in another foxhole and he other men scream as they faded. He doesn't want Steve to lose him again, or Sam either, but at least he feels the safety of knowing, now, that there is something protecting them from him should he disappear again.

 


End file.
